NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-16-2025 2PM EST

Episode Date: November 16, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Amy Held. An escalation in what the Trump administration calls its counter-drug operation. The nation's most advanced aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford has arrived in the Caribbean Sea. It's unclear whether the military will be used against Venezuela, but the buildup is seen as a pressure tactic against the Maduro regime. Newly released paperwork shows a former member of the Fed's Board of Governors violated financial transaction ethics rules. NPR Scott Horsley reports the board member abruptly resigned three months ago. Paperwork released by the Office of Government Ethics shows Audra and Coogler bought and sold individual stocks last year in violation of Fed policy. Some of the transactions took place during so-called blackout periods around Fed meetings when trading is even more strictly regulated.

The rules are designed to avoid the appearance that Fed officials are trading on inside information. Coogler says the trades were made by her husband without her knowledge. News the stock trades may explain Coogler's decision to quit the Fed in August four months before her term expired. Her resignation gave President Trump an early opening to install White House economist Stephen Meyron on the Fed board, where Myron has echoed the president's call for more aggressive interest rate cuts. Scott Horsley, MPR News, Washington. A judge has ruled the Trump administration cannot find the University of California or withhold federal funding based on its discrimination allegations.

From Member Station KQED in San Francisco, Juan Carlos Lara, reports. The ruling is a victory for faculty, staff, and student groups who sued after the administration demanded that UCLA pay over $1 billion and change campus policies, like a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, to reinstate frozen federal funding. Connie Chan is counsel for some of those groups. The ruling is really significant. It requires the government to refrain from using its pressure tactics to try to coerce the University of California into adopting the administration's preferred ideological views. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. For NPR news, I'm Juan Carlos Lara in San Francisco. Ukraine is working to resume prisoner exchanges with

Russia. NPR's Polina Litvinov reports from Keev. Ukraine's Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Rustam Omerov, announced that he has had consultations with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates on the resumption of the POW's exchanges between Ukraine and Russia. In his post on social media, Umeirov wrote, this would help to activate the agreements the two countries made during the direct talks in Istanbul. Ukraine hopes to return home more than 1,000 people before Christmas. The last prisoner exchange was in October. So far, such swaps are the only progress Ukraine and Russia have achieved since their direct negotiations renewed. viewed in spring.

Polina Litvinova, NPR News, Kyiv. It's NPR. In Chile, a new president and parliament are on the ballot today. Presidential candidates vary sharply, one a communist, another and ultra-conservative. Both have promised to focus on tackling crime. The top two candidates will face off in a runoff election next month. From Maltese to Mastiff, dog breeds clearly vary widely. NPR's Nate Roth reports a new study finds there's been a lot of variation for thousands of years.

It's long been thought that the intensive selective breeding of dogs over the last few hundred years is what's given us a world where chihuahuas and newfellans coexist. But scientists looked at more than 600 ancient dog skulls dating as far back as the last ice age to see where different physical attributes started to occur. Carly Amin is a bioarchologist at Exeter University. by about 10,000 years ago, half of the amount of diversity present in modern dogs is already present in the Neolithic. The study published in the journal Science is part of a broader research project to better understand the origins of our beloved pups. Nate Rot, NPR News.

This story has legs. What is believed to be the world's largest known spider's web, topping 1,100 square feet, was discovered in creepy conditions, the pitch black of a sulfur-rich cave on the Albanian-Greek border. Tens of thousands of arachnids call it home. Researchers say two different species peacefully cohabitate there. Spider group living is rare, according to an evolutionary biologist who likens it to humans living side by side in a cramped apartment building. It's NPR News.